Scant Support for Elite New York High Schools’ Admissions Options

Students leaving Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan for the day. Bills being introduced in Albany would allow New York's competitive high schools to use multiple factors for admission, rather than one single test.

Andrew Renneisen / The New York Times

By AL BAKER

June 9, 2014

Civil rights advocates have long complained about the relatively small number of black and Hispanic students in New York City’s most selective high schools. Mayor Bill de Blasio, during his campaign last year, complained about it, too.

But bills now being introduced in Albany to change what critics argue is a discriminatory admissions policy are receiving no great embrace, but rather tepid political support.

Among the backers of the legislation are two Democrats, Assemblyman Karim Camara of Brooklyn and Senator Adriano D. Espaillat of Manhattan, who is in the midst of challenging United States Representative Charles B. Rangel in a campaign in which race has emerged as a volatile issue. But there appears to be little momentum in either chamber for the bills, which would allow the schools to use multiple measures to decide whom to admit, rather than the single criterion — a test two and a half hours long — that they now must rely on.

So narrow is the support that at a news conference to announce the legislation, the backers of the bill held out Senator Simcha Felder of Brooklyn as an example of bipartisan agreement. While Mr. Felder often votes with Republicans, he is a Democrat.

“Are we disappointed that more lawmakers are not speaking up about this issue? Absolutely,” said Jeffrey N. Maclin, a spokesman for the Community Service Society, an antipoverty group. “Perhaps if more black and Latino lawmakers were vocal about how this admission policy perpetuates inequality and denies qualified students access to the city’s elite schools, we’d see momentum build for changing the law and creating a fairer system.”

Even with significant backing, passing the bills — one in each chamber — might be difficult. The bills seek to change a 1971 law that makes the exam, known as the Specialized High School Admissions Test, the only measure that can be used to admit students to Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. The law was passed to appease parents, most of them white, who were worried about Board of Education proposals to introduce other criteria to diversify the schools, as backers of the new bill want to do.

And the test remains popular in some quarters, particularly among Asian and other immigrant groups who see passing the test as an attainable steppingstone to a good college and later success. While in office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg consistently said he saw no need to tweak the state law, known as the Hecht-Calandra Act.

The new bills say the city should create an admission “power score” that would factor in a student’s grade point average, attendance and state exam scores, as well as the specialized admissions test, known as SHSAT. Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the city’s Education Department, said in a statement that Chancellor Carmen Fariña supported the idea. “A student is more than the result of one exam,” Ms. Kaye said. “By factoring in additional criteria with the SHSAT, this legislation represents a real opportunity to attract excellence and achieve a more diverse student body in our city’s specialized high schools. We look forward to working with our state partners on the legislation.”

Mr. de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, said last year that the test should not be the only way into the schools. But by Monday, no memo of support from City Hall had been disseminated at the State Capitol, according to several people involved in the effort.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, which is behind the push, said he thought the administration might get more forcefully behind it, too.

“I do remember candidate de Blasio speaking very eloquently about this issue,” said Mr. Mulgrew. “I’m sure they’ll be coming out shortly, one way or another, now that this is out there and it’s moving.”

Since the law was passed, the city has created five more schools whose admissions are based solely on the same exam. According to the Education Department, black students were offered only 5 percent of the seats at the eight schools this year and Hispanics 7 percent, even though 70 percent of the city’s public school students are black or Hispanic.

Asians were offered 53 percent of the seats, while whites were offered 26 percent.

One of the main complaints about the test is that it favors students who can afford test preparation. In an opinion piece in the Stuyvesant newspaper last year, one student defended the practice: “The preparatory classes are being taken by students who, hungry to succeed, are willing to sacrifice their summers or weekends for an extra 50 points on the test. The classes are paid for by parents who want the brightest possible future for their kids, even if the classes come at a burdensome cost.”

While expressing support for increasing minority enrollment, in ways like providing them with more test preparation, Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, said that the existing system was simple and had “a number of benefits,” including “no favoritism, no bias, whether intentional or subconscious, no politics.”

“So it is an objective system for determining who gets to go,” he said.

And State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, who leads a group of independent Democrats who share power with Republicans in the Senate, said there were more effective ways to tackle the problem short of the current proposal.

“I think it needs to be debated some more,” said Mr. Klein. “And I’m committed to making sure that money is allocated to dramatically increasing test preparation, especially in disadvantaged areas.”

The bills would also make mandatory the city’s so-called Discovery program, which gives disadvantaged students with exam scores just below the admissions cutoff a chance to study over the summer and earn slots at the schools. The 1971 law allowed the Discovery program, but did not make it mandatory.

Mr. Cary said the program was still being used at Brooklyn Tech, the largest of the specialized schools with more than 5,000 students. Thirty children were admitted to the school through the program last year.